With Season 4 only a few months away, it seems apropos to bring up a fascinating comment/question PFB posted on Facebook (re-printed here with permission): "You can tell a lot about a person by their favorite house in Game of Thrones."

So I had to stop and ask myself which is my favorite House. Who do I find most compelling, most interesting, and who am I secretly rooting for even though I am loathe to admit it? It...wait, no, it couldn't be...good God—

—that's House Greyjoy's music!

But why? Why do I love House Greyjoy? Why do I find them so compelling? They're terrible people — of the Great Houses at the start of the show, objectively, ONLY the Lannisters are collectively worse human beings (and the Lannisters have Tyrion, at least). They do horrible things to their people and to each other. They are cold, ruthless, and unforgiving. The only one of them who isn't basically humorless is a complete fucking monster.

And they're amazing. I tend to gravitate towards the pirate faction in any setting (anyone who's ever played L5R with me can attest to my "MANTIS 4 LYFE MOTHERFUCKERS" attitude towards it), but that's not the real reason. No, honestly, the real reason is that they've just got such fucking STYLE. Such badass, swashbuckling, "YOU-DO-NOT-FUCK-WITH-US-LEST-WE-BREAK-YOUR-LEGS-AND-THEN-MAKE-YOU-THANK-US-FOR-IT" style.

Part of the problem is that people who have only seen the show — wait, stop groaning! This isn't one of those internet posts, I promise! Anyway, people who have only seen the show haven't yet met some of the best Greyjoy characters, and the one really good one they HAVE met hasn't had enough screen time. But you will. Ohhh, you will. Season 4 is going to be all up in the Greyjoys' business. Man, I envy the people about to meet these cats for the first time, because up until now (and with the exception of Asha/Yarra), you've only met the boring Greyjoys. It's about to get FUN on the Iron Islands.

Of the ones you're going to meet, Euron is one of the most evil characters in the series...and yet he's such a dashing bastard that he endlessly fascinates me. Basically, imagine every evil pirate captain you've ever heard of — no, stop thinking of Blackbeard, that's not dashing enough. OK, you know what? Just think of Errol Flynn, now turn him into Satan, remove his shirt, give him an eyepatch, and put him at the helm of a pirate ship crewed by mutes whose tongues he removed himself, and have him laugh madly into the face of the storm. There you go. That's Euron Greyjoy.

And he's not the only one. Victarion is basically the straight man in the family, and is only "not a completely evil guy" by the standards of the fuckhats he's related to (Asha/Yarra again excepted, of course)...but the dude wears a full suit of plate armor and wields a giant axe ABOARD SHIP IN COMBAT — that's how few fucks he gives. Aeron is a dire, humorless religious fanatic, exactly the sort of character I shouldn't like...and yet there's something oddly compelling about him. And then there's Asha/Yarra. I can't reasonably put into words how much I love this character. She isn't even really a good guy other than by the low bar set by her relatives, but she's my single favorite character in the entire GoT universe — yes, even more than Tyrion. I am not-so secretly rooting for Asha/Yarra to wind up on top of the heap when the smoke clears. Won't happen. Don't care. Still rooting for it.

The real thing I love about the Greyjoys is this: they just cannot be compelled to give any fucks. Their fucks have long ago run out, and their solution is to raze your coastal village and steal your fucks, which they will consequently piss away on a night of drunken, angry revelry that has about a 1 in 2 chance of ending with an almost-terminally inebriated topsman buggering a haddock. Their rationale for basically everything boils down to, "because fuck you, that's why." They're the most meme-able House in existence. And if you're still not convinced, do remember that you got one glimpse into how amazing they are at the tail end of Season 3, when Asha/Yarra tells Balon, in no uncertain terms, "fuck you. I'm taking our fastest ship and our best men, and I'm going to sail up into the mainland to rescue my brother, and on the way we are GOING TO FUCKING RAMPAGE." The epic badassery of that moment? Pretty much everything involving House Greyjoy going forward is a series of those moments.

So that's the reason that even Theon, aka The Worst Greyjoy, is enjoyable enough that he's my facebook profile picture (also because Hipster Theon is amazing and I will never get tired of that meme). Haters gonna hate on House Greyjoy; we'll be busy not sowing in the meantime.

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So how about it, GT? Who is your favorite House, and why do you love them?